Sunday, March 31, 2013

Coloring Eggs with Natural Ingredients

I've been pinning interesting egg ideas to my holiday Pinterest board for months, and many of the Easter pins have to do with using natural dyes for eggs. I was planning to do blue-gray and blue, but forgot I used the rest of the frozen blueberries in smoothies (new blender, it's a compulsion). In the end, I only made one color, but was very happy with the results and will be doing more of this next year!

Step 1: Boil eggs. Martha Stewart says you can actually boil the eggs in the strained natural dyes, so you can take that into consideration. That isn't how I did it.

Step 2: Prepare natural ingredients. I roughly chopped half a red cabbage and simmered it in water for 15 minutes. I let it cool then added 1 tbsp vinegar.

Step 3: Soak cooled eggs in cooled natural dye overnight in fridge. I stirred my container a few times because I noticed white spots where they were touching. My container may not have been ideal.

Step 4: Gently wipe eggs and let dye dry. This could be a fine place to start, as the colors are vibrant. But I had some other ideas.

Step 5: Draw on eggs with food-safe markers. I used the foodoodler markers I had previously purchased from King Arthur Flour. The moisture on the eggs was a problem, and many of the designs were smudged. But those that dried looked pretty amazing. The white one with words has the beginning of the poem "Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand. Tomorrow is the start of National Poetry Month, so I've had it on my mind.